'Doomsday' was doomed from the outset

Thursday

Mar 27, 2008 at 3:15 AM

By Andrew FlingShowcase Movie Critic

A plague called the Reaper virus sweeps across northern Britain in the not so distant future. The government is forced to quarantine all of Scotland via a massive, steel wall. Years later, the virus rears its ugly head again in London and threatens to wipe out the entire country and possibly the world. An elite team is sent beyond the wall, into Scotland where its members are to find and bring back a survivor, for he or she may hold the cure for the Reaper virus within them.

The team discovers quickly that the survivors are not friendly and that they are divided into two groups: the savage, cannibal city dwellers led by the vicious Sol, and the regressed, medieval country dwellers led by Sol's father, Kane (Malcolm McDowell). The team finds a survivor who will escape with them and they fight for their lives to bring the living cure safely home.

I've given more away in my synopsis than I usually do. I apologize for the lack of a spoiler alert, but I really don't feel too bad about it: the movie was spoiled the moment it was pitched to a studio executive.

"Doomsday" is a little bit "28 Days Later," a little bit "Road Warrior" and a lot "Escape From New York." You would think these ingredients would make for one heck of a cinema stew, but you'd be wrong. It was shoddy at best: poorly edited, ridiculously scored and seemingly directed by a detention hall full of 15 year olds.

Director/writer Neil Marshal would appear to be attempting to get the action/horror movie thing down. "Dog Soldiers," "The Descent" and now "Doomsday," these are his accomplishments. Arguably, "The Descent," a gruesome movie about female spelunkers attacked by underground, flesh eating people, is a pretty good movie and evidence that Marshal was beginning to get it. "Doomsday," however, is a long, painful step backward.

There was little attempt at continuity or even a sense of consistency in the world these characters were placed. For example, after explaining the chaotic state of London, a military vehicle drives slowly through Piccadilly Circus and we see on a massive TV screen the warning "Curfew In Affect." In the very next shot people are strolling around the city streets out for a bit a fresh air, one woman pushing a baby carriage. This along with much that came before and after it was hasty exposition rushing to the next gory action scene.

Obviously a fan of the giants (of action and horror anyway) who came before him, Marshal had no shame in setting us up with a "28 Days Later" scenario, painting the plot with broad strokes of "Escape From New York" and ending it all with a car chase that might as well have had actual scenes from "The Road Warrior" spliced into it. He even stole the term "reaper virus" from "Blade II" for frig sakes. He then filled in the gaps with his apparent obsession with cannibalism (see his former works) and the laughable premise that a desperate, isolated group of modern people would resort to a feudal state to survive.

With a few exceptions, the cast was mostly unknown. Those exceptions, though, made me wonder what kind of financial trouble they must have been in to say yes to this project.

David O'Hara, possibly best known for his role as the crazy Irishman in "Braveheart," plays the prime minister's adviser. He was cast in "Hotel Rwanda" and "The Departed," though the best showcase of his talent I believe was "The Matchmaker."

Malcolm McDowell (Kane), beginning his career in the early 1960s in TV, broke through with his lead role in "A Clockwork Orange." He has since had an extensive resume of work in both television and film.

Bob Hoskins (Bill Nelson), another actor with a prolific body of work, has been at it since the 70s. You may know him as the lead human in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

Perfectly good actors, plenty of talent and professionalism, lost in a dismal haze of Neil Marshal's making. Please trust my doomsaying: go rent any of the other movies I mentioned above and stay away from "Doomsday."